in reply to Efficiency of code

Looks good. The if is a bit shaky, and I don't mean the one you think:

if ($possible) { $average = sprintf("%2.2f", ($earned / $possible) * 100); if ($average >= 95) { $grade = "A"; } elsif ($average >= 90) { $grade = "A-"; } elsif ($average >= 87) { $grade = "B+"; } elsif ($average >= 84) { $grade = "B"; } elsif ($average >= 80) { $grade = "B-"; } elsif ($average >= 77) { $grade = "C+"; } elsif ($average >= 74) { $grade = "C"; } elsif ($average >= 70) { $grade = "C-"; } elsif ($average >= 67) { $grade = "D+"; } elsif ($average >= 64) { $grade = "D"; } elsif ($average >= 60) { $grade = "D-"; } elsif ($average < 60) { $grade = "E"; } } else { $grade = $average = $earned = $possible = "?"; }

One way to get rid of the big if:

@GRADES = qw( E D- D D+ C- C C+ B- B B+ A- A ); @BRACKETS = ( 60,64,67,70,74,77,80,84,87,90,95 ); if ($possible) { $average = sprintf("%2.2f", ($earned / $possible) * 100); $grade = 0; foreach (@BRACKETS) { $grade++ if ($average >= $_); } $grade = $GRADES[$grade]; } else { $grade = $average = $earned = $possible = "?"; }

And how about only preparing the query only once:

# prepare query $cursor = $dbh->prepare('SELECT * FROM grades WHERE className=?'); # cycle through courses foreach $course (@courses) { # execute query $cursor->execute($course); ... } ...